Towards source of motion in Romanian

Abstract

The present study discusses the licensing, derivation and semantics of source of motion prepositions in Romanian. By adoptiong the event composition and structure in Pustejovsky (1991) and Hale and Keyser (1993, 2002), I propose a structure of events modified by locative and directional PPs. Differently form English, Romanian exhibits a neat algorithm in lexicalizing Goal and Source PPs, which I argue to be both derived from locative PPs, given the absolute homophony. I suggest that whenever a motion verb is modified by a spatial prepositions, it licenses a path component in the internal structure of the PP, which is by default goal-oriented, unless "de" (a 'functional' morpheme lexicalizing the Source projection in the structure of spatial PPs) imposes source directionality. The last section deals with the syntactic asymmetry between goal and source PPs for which numerous arguments are provided. The asymmetry is based on the different positions in which they are generated into syntax.